UNE - 2002 Shakespeare Festival

Theatre Studies

Christmas 1967 — mini-skirts, beehive hairdos and the Vietnam War. A time of change. Australia is moving from self-contained complacency and innocence to a world stage of war and international politics. But it is also school holidays: time for the ritual of the summer beach pilgrimage. A tempest lays the caravan park to waste, stripping the holiday-makers to their spiritual core. Away is a magical fantasy about transformation. Framed by fragments of Shakespearean Comedy and Tragedy, and imbued with the great Shakespearean themes of suffering, regeneration and reconciliation, the play focuses on family in times of great change.

This year the School of English, Communication & Theatre, in the Faculty of Arts, will vary the approach of previous festivals and will offer you a modern play with "a touch of Shakespeare".

The Director is Barbara Albury who ran the Company 2a theatre group in Sydney for several years, performing mostly at Belvoir Downstairs. Barbara has written and adapted several dramas and has had her work produced on ABC radio (Watching Like the Moon) and on SBS television (Against All Odds).

Design is by Caitlin Morris, a founding member of the Red Shed Theatre in South Australia, who has performed with the Playbox Theatre and in the Glenn Elston productions of Shakespeare in the Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, and who will be familiar to many from her television appearances in episodes of The Flying Doctors, Neighbours and Phoenix. Both Barbara and Caitlin are adjunct Theatre Studies staff at UNE.

In 2002 we invite students to attend either matinee performances to be held in the Arts Theatre, or to early evening performances which will be staged, as in other years, on the lawns of Booloominbah. Students may also wish to attend an additional programme of scenes from Shakespeare devised by Professor Adrian Kiernander. This will precede the matinee performances of Away.

UNE hosts the Festival each year to enhance the graduation ceremonies. One of the main aims of the Shakespeare Festival is to provide opportunities for secondary school students from northern New South Wales, and beyond, to experience lively and thought-provoking productions of Shakespeare and related plays. The Festival augments the very successful Shakespeare events already organised by the schools in the region. In the past two years, the Outdoor Shakespeare Festival has attracted almost 2500 students from as far away as Ballina, Coffs harbour, Moree, Muswellbrook, Gilgrandra and Narrabri..

The UNE Outdoor Shakespeare Festival, with its innovative, lively productions provides a significant opportunity for learning and has become an important annual event in the cultural calendar for schools in regional New South Wales. It also provides a valuable opportunity for senior school students to visit UNE and to experience for themselves the advantages that this University offers as an elite environment for tertiary education of the highest quality.

We hope that teachers and students from all around the region will be able to attend this entertaining production on our beautiful grounds, and use it as a valuable learning experience about centrally important aspects of the new HSC.

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